Shipped from what country and for how much? :|
Afghanistan, two sheep?
Shipped from what country and for how much? :|
Great APIs are flexible and orthogonal. They can and will be used in ways that were not initially foreseen by the API architects. It's up to the driver writers to convert those orthogonal features into something that maps to the hardware. There are usually different ways to do this and since it's often not known up front how application developers are going to use it, driver writers will come up with something that works in, what they think, is a common way.I don’t have a lot of knowledge on this subject, but in my opinion, drivers should be optimized for APIs, and that’s it.
Their ‘API’ is x86 and although their hardware works in fundamentally different ways, you almost never hear of a program being optimized for different hardware (unless it’s an SSEx optimization, but they’re not too common), let alone the hardware manufacturer optimizing their chips for certain programs individually.
Re-releasing any chip on a smaller process is a major undertaking: most of your combinational logic can stay the same, so you'll win time there, but almost all the rest has to be redone. Analog cells much be redesigned and qualified. Synthesis, DFT, place & route done from scratch. Power circuits tuned. And then the whole process of full product qualification.They can still keep releasing newer cards, but why not just release the cards on refined processes.
... Eventually the drivers will be optimized for all the games. Or will they? More importantly, should they? I don’t have a lot of knowledge on this subject, but in my opinion, drivers should be optimized for APIs, and that’s it. The API has a set design and has to work in a uniform way as to enable us to have the duality which we enjoy (or used to) in the hardware industry. I know that shaders add complexity to this subject because they’re so programmable, but you don’t see CPU manufacturers having the same problem. Their ‘API’ is x86 and although their hardware works in fundamentally different ways, you almost never hear of a program being optimized for different hardware (unless it’s an SSEx optimization, but they’re not too common), let alone the hardware manufacturer optimizing their chips for certain programs individually. You might argue that there’s nothing wrong with that, the end result is still the same. We have our games and they run well on the hardware.
You're assuming here that that driver optimizations made for CoJ, CoD, and LP won't help newer games. With DX10 being so new, I doubt that this is the case: there must be plenty of performance opportunities available that don't require game specific tweaks.I agree that my x86, API comparison was an over simplification, but I still believe that you shouldn't have to rely on the drivers to optimize their performance for every single game individually as it creates problems like I stated above. There must be a better way.
Yes, they may be different individuals.@silent_guy: As far as I know, the people required to develop the chip on a more refined process is quite different from the team developing the ASIC...
You're assuming here that that driver optimizations made for CoJ, CoD, and LP won't help newer games. With DX10 being so new, I doubt that this is the case: there must be plenty of performance opportunities available that don't require game specific tweaks.
I'll just leave you with one extra thing to consider. The Xbox360 has a 203W power supply...
Pelly: I'm an enthusiast and would surely like to have the latest and greatest if I had any reason to. But the latest and greatest is all but useless right now, let alone that there are no games out there right now which would make me want it.
Well I chose Wii. I haven't been playing PC games for at least a year now, just because most of them simply suck. And I agree with PsychoZA, it's insanity buying new HW every few months just to have it sit there and heat up the room, while driving your electricity bills sky-high. Let alone the fact that you still wouldn't really need anything better than a good old GF7 or Radeon X1 series for the curent crop of games.
Yes and no. I was told once that because most artists will do things in slightly different and non-standard ways, you might have to waste 1-3 hours per art asset you buy off a merchant website. This drastically reduces the economical viability of doing this. It is, of course, far from the only problem.If we talk about art outsourcing the formats are the smallest of all problems.
I wouldn't be so worried about the performance characteristics if there was more choice on the market (which would happen if there were more buyers...) but the art style is indeed a major concern. If a game supports more exotic features than just the traditional ones, that also would have to be manually added to the art asset by the buyer.The art must fulfill the art style and performance criteria’s of a game. This cannot simply ensure with standard formats.
I agree completely. An artist once told me that he didn't want to use SpeedTree for a project and stick to an art style without as much vegetation, not because SpeedTree was bad... But because without significant effort, it it much too generic. It is possible to customize trees in very cool ways and differentiate yourself from other titles, but that takes a lot of effort.Middleware is another problem. Packages like Speedtree have the tendency to have a huge impact on the overall game design as games that use such a package have the tendency to look very similar.